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Friday, March 21, 2014

Praise The Helix!- Twitch Plays Pokemon

So lately my life is all about the pokemon. The thing that got me started again? Twitch Plays Pokemon!
TPP is crazy. Twitch is a an online streaming service, and someone was crazy enough to hook it up with an emulator to play pokemon games, where the commands are typed into the chat box on the side. What makes it great is that anyone at any time can join in, so thousands of people can be playing at once, all typing in different commands. In other words, total pokemon chaos! The poor player walks into walls, accidentally releases good pokemon form the PC and has trouble navigating menus in battle.

However, it's sort of like that saying about a thousand monkeys with keyboards accidentally writing Shakespeare. It worked! Twitch has already beaten one game and is now progressing through different generations of pokemon. It's been fun to watch the actual game being played, but even more fun to see the community that has been built up around it. Early on in the first game the players received the Helix Fossil, which can be revived into an Omanyte. While still a fossil, it can be selected form the inventory and examined, which happened a lot despite it doing nothing. This caused the fans to joke the fossil was a god they needed to consult. The Helix God. The whole thing got pretty silly and intense, with a whole mythos rising up around it, complete with artwork.

There's even a subreddit dedicated to following the game. Check it out HERE.
Are you a fan of twitch plays pokemon? Have you played?